600 stores (for now) and many jobs

Starbucks Ponzi scheme is falling apart. The only surprise to me is that it took this long to start melting.
The bad thing about a Ponzi is that if no new ones can be built then the cash flow is insufficient to make additional payments on more stores or even old ones!

12,000 jobs are either down the drain or 12,000 unemployed won't be hired to fill in for normal turnover at the remaining stores.

It was strange to think that as much as $10-12 per day was being spent by Starbucks customers on coffee alone. That would amount to something like $2-3 thousand dollars per year for coffee and "buddying," alone!

This was an obvious "bad" business plan to me several years ago. Good as a fad, but no long term business.

On top of that the idiots running the company said that the drowning out of the coffee smell in the building by the sandwiches they tried to sell, was the reason for the demise.

The reason was that there are only so many spots in the world where you can sell a $4-5 cup of coffee and yet look like a chain! Overpaid people in sections of the country will put up with it as long as they are overpaid. When they are not or there aren't enough of them it dies off. That should have been obvious.

I fear the same is happening with restaurants now. Paying $25-35 per head for planned platters and ambiance won't go well on a maxed-out credit card. Really rich people don't go there often to start with! They have cooks at home.

It took a bunch of Texas Mafia to set all this off, but it will take twice that much effort by others to straighten it out---that is, without another war and more national debt!